Puerto Rico provides reasons to explore, exhale

Less than an hour to the west was San Juan. Directly across Route 3, the area's main drag, replete with strip mall chain stores and makeshift roadside stands, El Yunque National Forest rose into the clouds.

We were staying in a friend's condominium a short golf cart ride from the beach, which gave our daughters (who were too young to drive our rental car) some time on their own. A few minutes away was Luquillo, a palm-lined public beach.

We had arrived at a location filled with a rich variety of things to do and plenty of opportunity to do nothing but lie in the sun or body surf. The latter was the appeal to our daughters, who complain when we pack in too much sightseeing. This time, as our 21-year-old put it, "It didn't feel like too much."

El Yunque, the only tropical rain forest in the US National Forest System, began as a 12,300-acre reserve set aside by King Alfonso XII of Spain in 1876. Now a 28,000-acre dense, verdant preserve, its 1,200 plant species include some 240 types of trees and 70 varieties of orchids. The warble of the coquí, the Puerto Rican tree frog, provides the sound track. For an introduction, stop at El Portal, a visitors center entered via elevated pathways that provide a canopy walk 60 feet above the forest floor. It features an introductory film narrated by actor Jimmy Smits.

Well worth the $5 ticket is the guided walk that leaves the Palo Colorado Interpretive Site on a first-come first-served basis from 10:30 a.m. until 2:30 p.m. daily. On a one-hour slow stroll along a forest path, a guide pointed out miniature orchids and "air plant" bromeliads that attach themselves to trees and take moisture from canopy drippings above.

El Yunque has an extensive system of trails, many paved and dotted with picnic areas built during the Great Depression. The most popular is El Mina, a trail that descends from 2,132 feet to 1,640 feet in less than a mile, sometimes on concrete steps. The trail runs along, and crisscrosses, the La Mina River and ends at the spectacular Cascada La Mina, a 35-foot waterfall.